SOURCE: "David Mamet's Attempt to Decode Family Life," in The New York Times, April 14, 1995, p. C3.

[In the review below, Canby offers a laudatory assessment of The Cryptogram, extolling Mamet's use of language and disturbing dramatization of family life and "emotional games."]

The Cryptogram, David Mamet's radical, elliptical new work as both playwright and director, is not casually titled: it speaks in code.

The play is thick with spare Mamet language, which is delivered in such a relentless way that commonplace words take on an edge and a ferocity that have little to do with the meanings and emotions they usually evoke. The words sometimes punish. They also illuminate, creating a child's vision of the world with a poignancy seldom experienced in the contemporary theater.

At the end of the 75 intermission-free minutes, you may be moved and mesmerized, as I was. Or, like some others, you may be...